A History of Violence (Page 3)

Why did Woody Allen choose to make a contemporary version of An American Tragedy, and why did he set it in London with an Irish-born tennis pro as the protagonist? The answers to those questions still elude me, weeks after seeing Match Point. Is there no social climbing in the United States today, no lust, no heartless crime? Is there no opera, for that matter? (Another departure for Allen: the use of Donizetti and Verdi on the soundtrack, rather than Bechet and Ellington.) I can see that Allen might have wanted a break from his routine, but I don't understand the relevance of his decisions to anyone but himself--and to anyone who might want to watch his most absorbing picture in years.

There is much to puzzle over in the movie, including an unelaborated gay subtext thick enough to have added another hour to Brokeback Mountain. But from the moment Jonathan Rhys Meyers, as the tennis pro, walks in on Scarlett Johansson as a tough-talking, Ping-Pong playing American, Match Point has a dirty-minded energy that just won't be stopped. "You've got a sensuous mouth," the observant Rhys Meyers says, more or less by way of hello. "So do you," Johansson might have replied--not that it matters. Her response is tawdry enough; and the doom that blossoms from it deserves to be called sensuous, too.

* * *

The holiday movie season that began with the Narnia lion has reached its climax with the giant ape--and you can guess which beast I'm rooting for.

Writer-director Peter Jackson, relaxing after The Lord of the Rings, has slacked off by making a King Kong that runs a mere three hours, involves only a dozen or so major characters (plus uncounted extras) and deploys just enough special effects to rebuild 1930s Manhattan, with an entire prehistoric world thrown in. Jackson knows he cannot re-create the meaning of the original but only reflect upon it. (If he keeps the Empire State Building, he uses something that is now an icon of nostalgia, not modernity. If he decides instead to go contemporary and have Kong scale the Petronas Towers, he makes too telling a comment on our distance from the era of Merian Cooper.) So, not trying too hard, Jackson has retold King Kong as a Depression-era story, but with improvements. If Cooper had Kong wrestle a dinosaur, Jackson must have him fight three--while caught midair in a tangle of vines, juggling Naomi Watts.

She's so splendid, by the way, that she upstages the special effects, as Jackson would have wanted. Her talent, and the soulfulness of Kong (animated on the model of Andy Serkis), make this a movie fit for adult audiences.

Well, that and the mammoth carnivorous worms.

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